SGN December 30, 2022

ISSUE 5 2

C E L E B R AT I N G

VOLUME 50

48 YEARS

F R I D AY

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PRINT S E AT T L E ’ S L G B T Q I A + N E W S & E N T E R TA I N M E N T W E E K LY S I N C E 19 74

PLANNED PARENTHOOD ACTIVISTS FACE 2023 WITH HOPE

by Lindsey Anderson SGN Staff Writer 2022 was a rough year for many, but some of the hardest hits fell on the reproductive justice movement. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States officially overturned the landmark case Roe v. Wade with the ruling of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Following the decision, individual states were granted the right to determine the legality of medical procedures such as abortion. Thirteen states had “trigger bans” in effect, which meant that immediately following the decision laws went into effect banning abortion and closing or defunding local Planned Parenthood facilities.

see HOPE page 5

Photo by Lindsey Anderson

Florida to investigate drag Christmas show Drag queen Nina West hugs a child in the audience at a recent performance – Image courtesy of Murray & Peter

by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer The state of Florida is investigating a drag Christmas show on charges of exposing children to sexually explicit activity.

The show, titled A Drag Queen Christmas, debuted in Fort Lauderdale on December 26, played in Miami on December 27, and will also hit the stage in Orlando and Clearwater.

see FLORIDA page 18

Best of 2022: As great a cinematic year as any in recent memory The Banshees of Inisherin – Photo courtesy of Seachlight Pictures

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN Staff Writer It always kills me a little inside when someone has the gall to say a given year “wasn’t a good one for film.” I hate being an absolutist about anything, but I can state

with total certainty that this is never true.

Maybe you were disappointed in what you happened to watch from January to December, but that doesn’t for one second mean the entire 365-day period was a bad one for film.

see BEST OF page 6

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C E L E B R AT I N G 4 8 Y E A R S!

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In this Issue

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3

Local News

Beating the blues: a list of Queer resources for the winter

by Georgia Skerritt SGN Intern Although the passing of the winter solstice on December 21 means the days are getting longer, Seattleites still won’t see much sunlight for the next few months.

Anyone who has lived in the Seattle area knows that, as cozy as they might seem, Pacific Northwest winters can be brutal in more ways than one.

According to the University of Washington’s Counseling Center, people living in Florida (or anywhere else closer to the equator) have less than a 2% chance of experiencing seasonal depression or seasonal affective disorder, also known as SAD. In northern regions like the PNW and Canada, this rate climbs to about 10%.

Additionally, certain groups — like LGBTQ+ folks — are more prone to general mental health struggles. Whether it’s inadequate access to healthcare, strained relationships with family, or a lack of financial support, members of the Queer community in Seattle must often cope with added stressors on top of the winter blues.

As we settle into another winter, here are some local and national resources for anyone who might need extra support.

Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Center Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Center, formerly known as Gay City, is one of the city’s best hubs for Queer community support.

The center was previously located on Pike Street but relocated this spring to 400 E. Pine (at the intersection of Pine St. and Bellevue Ave.) on Capitol Hill.

The organization was founded in 1995 when a group of local activists created the original Gay City in their mission to strengthen Seattle’s Queer community during the ongoing HIV epidemic.

To this day, it remains King County’s leading HIV and STI testing site. The center also offers general healthcare and gender-affirming services, youth engagement events, art-centered programs, voting assistance, and an online database with dozens of resources. For more information, visit the website at https://www.gaycity.org or swing by in person.

Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network The Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network is a Seattle-based grassroots organization that aims to provide low-and nobarrier financial assistance to Two-Spirit, Trans women, and femmes of color.

Founders Isyss Viena, Mattie Mooney, Lourdez Velasco, and Kelsen Caldwell had all previously worked with nonprofits and wanted to create, as Mattie said in an interview with the nonprofit Blue Heart, “a sustainable fund so folks always have a lifeline or a fund for expenses that come up every day that may or may not be bills.”

The TWOCSN team aims to offer unrestricted assistance to those in need without requiring justification or explanation. Since its establishment in September 2018, the group has donated over $800,000 to the community.

For more information, visit the organization’s Instagram page @ twocsolidaritynetwork.

Photo by Abhishek Sanga / Pexels

social connection via events, Somos also organizes an ongoing scholarship fund for Latinx and/or LGBTQ+ high school seniors in the Mukilteo School District.

To learn more about support and social events or to donate, see the Somos website at https://www.somosseattle.org.

Somos Seattle Another grassroots collective, Somos (meaning “we are” in Spanish) is centered around strengthening and supporting LGBTQ+ Latinx folks in Seattle. As stated on the group’s website, Somos’ goal is “to build an active community, share resources, and foster spaces of learning and growth.”

Throughout the year, Somos hosts a variety of events, including a June Pride reception, an exclusive Latinx Pride party, and multiple jotería parties (these offer a Queer spin on the traditional Mexican card game lotería). Beyond facilitating

Lambert House Located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, Lambert House is a Queer youthcentered home and safe space offering social engagement, resources, and fun.

Officially established in 1981 as the Association of Gay and Lesbian Youth Advocates, it was the first LGBTQ+ youth-centered organization to receive 501(c)3 status from the IRS. Today, Lambert House receives between 20 and 40 young visitors every day. The drop-in center at 1818 15th Avenue offers living rooms, pool tables, music stations, books, TV, and games. More than anything,

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though, it offers social connection.

Seattle’s LGBTQ+ youth can also take advantage of Lambert House’s wide variety of online meetups and classes; recent offerings included BIPOC groups, neurodiversity and allies groups, Nonbinary groups, and a sexual education seminar, all accessible via Zoom. The Lambert House website also has a section dedicated to mental health resources, complete with tips for finding a good therapist.

To find out more or donate, check out https://www.lamberthouse.org.

The Trevor Project and TrevorSpace An American nonprofit founded in 1998, the Trevor Project is well known for its crisis and suicide prevention efforts with Queer youth. The organization offers a 24-hour toll-free phone number so youth can access confidential support from trained counselors.

In its 2021 national survey on LGBTQ+

youth mental health, the Trevor Project found that 42% of LGBTQ youth have seriously considered attempting suicide. Additionally, 72% reported symptoms of generalized anxiety and 62% reported symptoms of major depressive disorder.

In efforts to minimize these numbers, TrevorSpace was born. A secure online networking system, TrevorSpace is accessible almost anywhere in the world and is completely free. While TrevorSpace doesn’t offer professional mental health support, it does offer much-needed social connection and networking for users between 13 and 24 years old, a place where they can create profiles, participate in discussion forums, pose questions, and even join featured communities like writing clubs.

Visit https://www.thetrevorproject.org/ explore/ or https://www.trevorspace.org for more information.

C E L E B R AT I N G 4 8 Y E A R S!

vices, they probably would have been able to get healthcare that honored them as a whole human being, not just as a patient.”

Planned Parenthood is a great resource for LGBTQ+ people seeking affordable healthcare. Everyone at the organization, from the doctors to the receptionists, is respectful of Queer and Trans identities.

“One of the best things I think about the clinical side of Planned Parenthood is the staff is understanding. It’s such a simple way of putting it, but it is that simple. If you go to Planned Parenthood, you can expect that you can talk to your medical providers or anyone on the medical team about issues you might not be able to talk to with a regular primary care physician. You’re not going to be faced with stigma if you are getting STI checks; you are going to be met with compassion and understanding when you are talking about difficult things. You are not going to face people who don’t support Trans people or who are disrespectful of the type of sex that you are having or the people that you have sex with or just love,” Brown said.

HOPE

continued from cover In Washington, lawmakers scurried to ensure that legal abortion would not only stay in effect but also that people seeking care from outside the state would still be granted all legal rights and protections if they chose to travel to the region for health care. Dobbs changed the way many people view abortion, bodily autonomy, and activism, and it encouraged many to get involved in politics in new ways.

Refusing to be silenced One Washingtonian spurred to new action

by Dobbs was Madeline Brown, who had previously volunteered with Planned Parenthood. After the Supreme Court reversed the nearly 50-year decision, Brown felt a new urgency to be of service, and she officially found employment with the organization.

“I have been an employee with Planned Parenthood since the end of July [2022]; however, I have been working or volunteering as a storyteller [there] since 2020,” Brown said.

At the time of the Dobbs decision, Brown was well on her way to establishing a career as a political lobbyist in a field other than reproductive justice — until everything changed. “I was doing an internship at a lobbying firm and I was offered a position at the company, but I would have had to be quiet about my pro-abortion stance and my support of Planned Parenthood and reproductive justice,” she said. “Honestly, that job was a dream job. It was exactly what I wanted.

It wasn’t in the reproductive justice field, which would have been ideal, but it was a position I could have learned a lot from. But I couldn’t sit back and know that I have a powerful voice in this movement and not use it.

So I gave up a dream job.”

Giving up such an important job could have been devastating for Brown, but Planned Parenthood, the organization she was so passionate about, was there to catch her. “I got involved with Planned Parenthood in one of our most critical times in history. It reinvigorated my passion for organizing. I had veered outside of organizing, but I came back as soon as the Dobbs decision came down.”

Brown’s story isn’t unique. Many young people found themselves thrown into the political fray following the decision. Political analysts have cited the reversal of abortion rights as one of the key factors that played into the drastic increase in young voter participation in the 2022 midterm election.

“It has engaged a lot of people who normally wouldn’t, and I think you can see that with the election results,” Brown added. “It was kind of expected to be the ‘red wave,’ but it wasn’t.

I think a big part of that was because of the Dobbs decision and people who were like, ‘It’s fine, I’ll be fine,’ you know, for the last 50 years were like, ‘Oh, crap, this is scary, and I might need to get involved.’”

Brown got involved with the group she had originally volunteered for, the storytellers. “We are a group of people who have done some training about how to most effectively tell your story,” she explained. “It provides an opportunity for you to share your story outside your circle. I have been invited to speak with the teen group over Zoom and told them my abortion story, and I have also spoken at a rally in front of thousands of people. I have had media requests, so we kind of do anything, kind of any scale, from groups of just volunteers and people who want education up to major media requests,” she said. “Now, actually, what I’m most excited about in this position is that I am taking over the storytellers group. I am very excited. The storyteller group is powerful, and I am excited to be a part of it.”

Working with the grassroots There are many facets to working at Planned Parenthood. For some, involvement comes on the clinical end, working with actual patients and performing medical tasks and procedures. For others, the task is lobbying for more funding with the national Planned Parenthood Political Action Committee. For people like Brown, most of the work is done on the ground, advocating for the organization and building a movement up from the grassroots.

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Photo by Lindsey Anderson

“What do we do in the community?

We want people to understand the services that are provided by Planned Parenthood.

Clinic staff can’t be the only ones who are disseminating that information. There are a lot of people who think that Planned Parenthood is just for birth control and abortions, but it provides so many other things — gender-affirming care, vasectomies. We refer out for general care, we don’t do mammograms, but we do tests and referrals. We have a lot of services that are available, and I get to remind folks that Planned Parenthood is in their community by talking about it a lot,” she said.

Brown also gets to help new volunteers find their place in the movement and unlock their activist potential. “The other part is getting folks involved. That is the bread and butter of what I do, and what I have been doing as an organizer for years, making sure that people have the opportunity to get involved in transformative action.”

Sometimes her work involves politics and encouraging voters to support candidates who will protect abortion rights in the office. “We just got out of election season, and we did canvassing across the state.

We did canvassing for our endorsed candidates. That is an opportunity for pro-choice advocates to come out to the community and talk about the things that are the most important to them and why we should vote and elect pro-choice candidates.”

Brown’s involvement with Planned Parenthood couldn’t have come at a more dire time. Due to anti-abortion laws that went into place following Dobbs, Washington clinics are now seeing a large influx of out-of-state patients. “We are getting more patients into Washington. The volume has gone up and we also know from addresses and stuff that people are coming in from outside the state. It’s not something we specifically ask about, but when you check the numbers from last year, or over the last five years versus this year, I guarantee as the new year comes in and we start resetting those numbers, we’re going to see some staggering results.” Because of all the new patients, Washington’s Planned Parenthood PACs are working overtime to secure more funding to ensure all patients can get the care they need.

Brown’s favorite part of her job is “helping people find their inner activists and giving them the tools and guidance and opportunities to be really powerful activists. What I always say is that we all have a lane in the revolution, so what I’m good

at is what someone else isn’t good at, and what someone else is great at, we’re all gonna make up for it because we’re all in it together. We get people who want to be involved, and then help them build power.”

Facilitating community growth As a grassroots activist, Brown meets people where they’re at and learns about the needs of specific communities. “People in their community are the experts in their community. I’m just here to help facilitate, that’s kind of how I see it. I want to be intentional about who we are reaching out to and the communities we are trying to talk to. We have a wonderful network of upper-middle-class white folk volunteers, but one thing I want to focus on is going out into the communities where that is not the represented group. Where we can power build in communities where power building is the most important, so kind of branching out from our traditional base and finding more folks to get involved.”

Reaching out to communities that are less likely to be involved with Planned Parenthood also means dispelling common mistruths that are spread about the organization. “I think that people who are not supportive or understanding of Planned Parenthood, kind of the layperson who is uninvolved, who stays out of the fray, I think that people assume when we say ‘pro-choice’ we mean just pro-birth control or pro-abortion, but I haven’t met a group of people who are more pro-babies than the group of people I work with,” Brown said.

“When we say we are pro-choice, we are genuinely and deeply pro-choice. We just want every single person to make the right reproductive choice for them, and for some people, that is having babies and for some people, it is not, and for some people, it is adoption, IVF, or surrogacy, and we support every single one of those.”

Another thing people often don’t realize about Planned Parenthood is that the services are not just for heterosexual cisgender women. The clinics often provide care to Queer and Trans people, either in the form of STI testing, or aiding in medical transitions.

“I come from a more conservative town on the East side of the state, and I know how hard of a time my LGBTQ+ friends had trying to access good service. I think that that’s part of why people must know the breadth of services Planned Parenthood offers because I think, had my friends known about Planned Parenthood and all of the ser-

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Moving toward the future Brown hopes to use her position as an activist for Planned Parenthood to reach out to people who may not be aware of all the services the organization offers — including members of the LGBTQ+ community.

As the year comes to a close and she looks toward the future, one of her goals is to help form more political coalitions that can help protect all people who seek care from Planned Parenthood from discrimination.

“I know that we are not going to fix all of the problems across the nation, but we have an opportunity this legislative session to invest in the future that we have here in Washington, not just as Washingtonians but as people who are coming to this beautiful state to obtain basic healthcare,” Brown said. “We’ve got a really solid plan about how we’re going to go about doing that, and for folks who want to get involved in testifying and talking to lawmakers, we would always love to have more help with that.”

“Throughout the year I want to be very intentional about the work we do and who we are reaching out to and what communities we are trying to uplift the most. The LGBTQ+ community is one of the most important,” she continued. “I want to build connections. We also want to find ways to find joy in our lives and with the people around us even when our communities are pushed down, forgotten about, and ignored. I think that finding joy amongst the sorrow and chaos and confusion is one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves. Deep, unabashed self-love, community love, that’s another more personal hope for the year.”

One way Brown started expressing love, for herself and her community, was through working with Planned Parenthood.

Now, as she moves into 2023, she hopes she can help more people embrace the activist inside themselves and continue to fight for reproductive rights.

“I am here to make activism more accessible for people. I want to coax it out of them. All they have to do is get a hold of me, and I will find out ways to help people get involved. It kind of starts with a quick one-on-one, like a fifteen- or twenty-minute interview or chit-chat to find out what they’re interested in. We’ve got so many things that we do, grassroots-wise,” she said.

“If you have a passion, you can be an activist. There is no prerequisite for being an activist. There is no resume or set of skills that you need to advocate for yourself and your community and the people around you. Activism is for anyone. And anyone who says there needs to be a barrier to entry or a hurdle you need to jump before you can call yourself an activist is a kind of doing a disservice. Show up as you are, where you are, and we will meet you there and move the needle forward and figure out how we can get you more involved.”

For anyone interested in volunteer or activism work with Planned Parenthood, Brown says they can personally reach out to her at madeline.brown@ ppallianceadvocates.org or find more information on the Planned Parenthood website.

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5

Film

The Fabelmans – Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures

The reality is that it is impossible to watch every film that comes out each year.

There is just way too much material to sort through, and no one person could ever hope to get their eyes on the majority of it. If you felt the year was bad, it’s only because you didn’t step outside your comfort zone to experience stories of every genre and in a variety of languages.

To put it simply: There is great stuff released every year, and 2022 was no exception.

I watched 308 films for the first time in 2022, and 145 of those were released this past year. That’s honestly a little lower than my normal average, as I’m typically right around 200 or so new releases. But it’s still a solid number, and I found more than enough to fall in love with, and quite a few I firmly believe will grow to become treasured classics over the coming decades.

While the theatrical experience did bounce back, it’s still safe to say that the combination of COVID-19 and the explosion in streaming options still put a significant dent in the types of pictures audiences were willing to head out of the house to see.

The biggest story of 2022 was undeniably the colossal success of Top Gun: Maverick, while the saddest one continued to be the relatively disappointing grosses for highprofile, adult-skewing titles like The Fabelmans, Babylon, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Bones and All, and Tár.

There were exceptions, including the word-of-mouth success of the enjoyably inventive multiverse comedy-dramaaction-science fiction-martial arts-romance hybrid Everything Everywhere All at Once. The female-driven historical action epic The Woman King also did well at the box office, and both films are considered to be relative shoo-ins for several Academy Award nominations when they’re announced on January 24, 2023.

Comic book adventures like The Batman, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Thor: Love & Thunder all met with predictable success, while others like Black Adam and Morbius notably underperformed.

Sequels like Jurassic World: Dominion and Minions: The Rise of Gru prospered, starstudded actioners like Bullet Train did just well enough to justify their production budgets, and a trio of romantic comedies (Marry Me, Ticket to Paradise, and the $100-million domestic hit The Lost City) reminded everyone that seasoned movie stars like Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Jennifer Lopez can still sell their fair share of tickets when appearing the right property.

Horror continued to be the easiest path to theatrical success. From legacy sequels (Scream) to new ideas (Smile) to selffinanced, self-distributed viral sensations (Terrifier 2), almost every month saw a “scary movie” play to an enthusiastic audience. Ti West and star Mia Goth managed an inventive one-two punch with X and Pearl, the wickedly perceptive foodie satire The Menu left viewers hungry for more, and the

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killer Airbnb abduction saga Barbarian took people down a gruesome rabbit hole chock full of surprises. The list goes on and on.

LGBTQ+ representation in major studio fare took center stage in Fire Island, Bros, Spoiler Alert, and a pair of animated Disney titles, Lightyear and Strange World.

Sadly, even though reviews and overall audience reaction were relatively positive, none did especially well during their theatrical runs: Fire Island sadly went straight to Hulu, and even Lightyear, with its $118-million domestic gross, was seen as disappointing. Worse, it is likely Hollywood will learn the wrong lessons, blaming each title’s ticket-selling shortcomings on that aforementioned representation and not on any storytelling, marketing, or release strategy missteps that may have occurred.

Other movies from this past year that stood out: James Cameron showed he’s still got the Midas Touch behind the camera, Avatar: The Way of Water printing money as it sailed past $ 1 billion in worldwide grosses in less than two weeks.

Netflix scored its first box office hit with Glass Onion even though it inexplicably kept detective Benoit Blanc’s second mystery in theaters for only seven days when it could have dominated ticket sales for an entire month. Hulu and Disney rejuvenated both the Predator series and Clive Barker’s demonic tale of cenobites and sin with Prey and Hellraiser to much acclaim, but that neither title got even a moderate theatrical release doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Back to Netflix for a moment: Other than the success of Glass Onion, the

streaming giant went big on its continued bid to jump-start new franchises, and whether things worked out as anticipated is anyone’s guess. Why? It’s impossible to know what does and does not do well on the service. But the idea that Netflix can keep spending hundreds of millions on splashy — and instantly forgettable — star-studded programmers like The Grey Man, The School for Good and Evil, and Slumberland cannot be profitable, and that makes the streamer’s announcement it’s going to try to “end” password sharing in 2023 understandable, if still not any less stupid.

There’s so much more we could talk about including Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Disney+ mining its parent studio’s vaults to ruinous results (Hocus Pocus 2, Pinocchio, and Disenchanted), and Shudder and IFC Films joining forces to release some of the year’s most critically successful thrillers (Watcher, See No Evil, The Innocents). Heck, we haven’t even dug into Warner Bros. erasing an entire, nearly completed DC comic book title (Batgirl) out of existence, all for a tax write-off.

But those items and so many other tales will have to be left for another day.

It all goes to show that 2022 was as terrific a year in cinema as any in recent memory, and I won’t hear any word otherwise.

The following is a handful of my favorite films of 2022. Lists like these are always subjective and will unquestionably change over time, and that’s exactly how it should be. But as a snapshot of how I feel as of December 26, this is as spot-on as I can get.

Without further ado:

C E L E B R AT I N G 4 8 Y E A R S!

The Eternal Daughter

Turning Red

Top ten of 2022 1. The Banshees of Inisherin (dir. Martin McDonagh) Friendship doesn’t last forever in writerdirector Martin McDonagh’s hysterically heartbreaking Irish tragedy. The setting may be the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s, but the themes and emotions remain universally relevant, while stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, and Barry Keoghan turn in four of 2022’s best performances.

2. The Eternal Daughter (dir. Joanna Hogg) Tilda Swinton does double duty as reserved filmmaker Julie Hart and her quietly introspective mother Rosalind, and the Academy Award-winner has never been better. Writer-director Joanna Hogg crafts a melancholy tale of introspection, memory, and family that lingers in the heart long after the film itself has come to an end.

3. Turning Red (dir. Domee Shi) Domee Shi’s wondrous animated marvel is a celebration of friendship and family, all of it centered on a teenage girl going through an unexpected transformation when her hormones and emotions go into overdrive — she transforms into a giant red panda! An absolute delight from start to finish, Turning Red is one of Pixar’s best.

4. Pearl (dir. Ti West) Ti West and star Mia Goth craft a prequel to their grindhouse throwback X and deliver a bloody delight that’s both a celebration of classic Hollywood and a devastatingly shocking descent into psychologically fracturing terror. Goth gives a performance for the ages: her final monologue is an absolute barnburner that’s out of this world.

5. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (dir. Jane Schoenbrun) A primal creepypasta whose disquiet digs under the skin, filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s masterful debut heads to the surreal corners of online discourse, clasps its cold, clammy hands on the viewer’s jugular, and then refuses to let go. Newcomer Anna Cobb is magnificent.

6. Glass Onion (dir. Rian Johnson) Daniel Craig returns as eccentric detective Benoit Blanc for a new murder mystery, this one involving a group of “disruptors” led

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The Banshees of Inisherin

Pearl

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Glass Onion

All Quiet on the Western Front

Three Thousand Years of Longing

Top Gun: Maverick

Bones and All

by charismatic billionaire tech mogul Miles Bron (Edward Norton). Funny, suspenseful, inventive, and intelligent, this crowd-pleasing, eat-the-rich cultural satire from Rian Johnson doesn’t pull a single punch. Janelle Monáe gives an understated but tremendous supporting performance that, like almost everything else in this triumph, is far more than initially meets the eye.

7. All Quiet on the Western Front (dir. Edward Berger) This powerful new take on author Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar masterpiece is a hypnotic, gut-wrenching journey through no man’s land that chilled me to the bone.

Director Edward Berger’s eye-popping WWI adaptation delivers shattering, character-driven mental anguish and unimaginable psychical trauma. The hellscape of war has seldom been depicted with such unrelenting clarity.

8. Three Thousand Years of Longing (dir. George Miller) Mad Max impresario George Miller’s adaptation of author A.S. Byatt’s 1994 short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” is a dreamy, visually resplendent tale of romance, loss, and intimacy that confidently pulls at all the melodramatic heartstrings. Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba burn right through the screen.

9. Top Gun: Maverick (dir. Joseph Kosinski) Possibly the year’s most inexplicably marvelous major Hollywood studio tentpole, director Joseph Kosinski and star Tom Cruise’s legacy sequel to 1986’s Top Gun is so stratospherically entertaining the film starts at Mach 10 and then refuses to slow down from there. While it’s still a featurelength commercial for the US Navy, great is still great, and Top Gun: Maverick is as one-of-a-kind great as they come.

10. Bones and All (dir. Luca Guadagnino) Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet set the screen ablaze as two lost souls who search for a human connection and find it comfortably nestled in the icy warmth of one another’s arms. The only problem?

They happen to be cannibals. Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’ novel is a perceptively complex examination of identity, gender, and sexuality all in revolt, an austere adventure and hauntingly personal road trip overflowing in gory twists and tear-jerking turns.

Twenty-five more (because I can) Avatar: The Way of Water (dir. James Cameron), Bodies Bodies Bodies (dir. Halina Reijn), Catch the Fair One (dir. Josef Wladyka), Close (dir. Lukas Dhont), Crimes of the Future (dir. David Cronenberg), Decision to Leave (dir. Park Chan-wook), Emergency (dir. Carey Williams), Emily the Criminal (dir.

John Patton Ford), Everything Everywhere All at Once (dir. Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan), The Fabelmans (dir. Steven Spielberg), Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (dir. Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson), Hellraiser (dir. David Bruckner), Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul (dir. Adamma Ebo), Marry Me (dir. Kat Coiro), Kimi (dir. Steven Soderbergh), The Menu (dir.

Mark Mylod), Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (dir.

Anthony Fabian), Prey (dir. Dan Trachtenberg), Nope (dir. Jordan Peele), Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (dir. Joel Crawford), RRR (dir.

S.S. Rajamouli), The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (dir. Tom Gormican), Women Talking (dir. Sarah Polley), X (dir. Ti West), You Won’t Be Alone (dir. Goran Stolevski)

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Five favorite documentaries All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (dir.

Laura Poitras), Bad Axe (dir. David Siev), Cow (dir. Andrea Arnold), Fire of Love (dir.

Sara Dosa), Sweetheart Deal (dir. Gabriel Miller, Elisa Levine) Ten favorite pre-2022 discoveries (because digging into the cinematic vault is fun!)

Arise, My Love (1940) (dir. Mitchell Leisen), The Baby (1973) (dir. Ted Post), Burn, Witch, Burn! (1962) (dir. Sidney Hayers), Chicago Confidential (1957) (dir.

Sidney Salkow), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) (dir. Rouben Mamoulian), Edge of Darkness (1943) (dir. Lewis Milestone), Merrily We Live (1938) (dir. Norman Z. McLeod), Righting Wrongs (1986) (dir.

Corey Yuen), That Certain Age (1938) (dir.

Edward Ludwig), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) (dir. Henry Hathaway)

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Powerful Women Talking speaks with courageous authority

Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, and Jessie Buckley in Women Talking – Photo courtesy of United Artists

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN Staff Writer WOMEN TALKING THEATERS Leave. Stay and fight. Do nothing.

Those are the options for the women of a small, isolated religious community in Women Talking. They’ve been waking up bruised, bloodied, abused, and sometimes even pregnant. But the men have been dismissing their concerns: They’re imagining it. They’re being punished for their sins.

There is nothing for them to cry foul about.

Turns out, some of the men have been drugging the women with bovine tranquilizer and then raping them while they’re passed out. Only now the men have been caught, and several of the accused have been turned over to the police. But the remaining men have gone into town to raise bail and get everyone released, telling the women to forgive them and move on like nothing has happened.

Now the women have a decision to make before the men return: Leave. Stay and fight. Do nothing.

Based on the best-selling novel by Miriam Toews, director Sarah Polley’s Women Talking is a powerful, thought-provoking drama that left me shattered. Insightfully complex, for a film where almost every meaningful minute takes place in the dusty hayloft of a creaky old barn, this is as tense and as suspenseful a thriller as anything I’ve seen in 2022.

But it is also a moving story of women taking charge of their lives as they never have before, and in a world where core human rights can vanish with the fall of a gavel, this may be the single most important component to Polley’s latest motion picture.

There is a hushed immediacy to what is happening that’s haunting. I was sitting on the edge of my seat. The verbal back-and-forths have electrifying urgency, each point of view examined and every voice heard before any decisions are made final.

The core ensemble is composed of Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Liv McNeil, Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, and Ben Whishaw. Producer Frances McDormand makes a brief yet essential appearance, while the talented August Winter deftly rounds out the primary cast, making an unforgettable impression during the film’s climax.

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All the actors are terrific, and Polley gives each the freedom to make every line of dialogue uniquely their own. This makes it hard to point to one standout performance as it’s difficult to imagine any character making an indelible impression without those standing, sitting, or speaking right next to them doing the same. Even so, Foy and Buckley are extraordinary, the latter particularly so. Her character’s conflicted, fiery anger is so palpable that the actor’s determined scowl is practically enough to set the screen ablaze all by itself.

Polley has already made a pair of instant classics, 2006’s unforgettable Alzheimer’s drama Away from Her starring Julie Christie and 2012’s mesmerizing familial investigative documentary Stories We Tell, and once again she is in complete control behind the camera. Her ability to bring the audience inside the frame along with the

characters is second to none. Polley crafts a tense yet surprisingly cathartic mood, and while the final moments are tinged with unnerving hesitation and sadness, there is also a sensation of purposeful triumph that had me choking back tears even as I wanted to rise to my feet and cheer.

Veteran cinematographer Luc Montpellier’s (Cairo Time) camerawork is as assertively intimate as ever. I love how the images he creates seem to glide along with seamless exactitude, almost as if the viewer were that proverbial fly on the wall taking in all the verbal fireworks from every conceivable angle.

Yet there is an issue. I am getting tired of the desaturated look that has become all too familiar in the last two decades. It’s as if Montpellier had shot things through a grayish-blue filter, draining all color from the proceedings and replacing it with a drab, tiresome delirium. I didn’t like it, and

it is a testament to the rest of the drama’s magnificence that this one facet didn’t kill my enthusiasm all by itself.

Women Talking isn’t just about a small religious sect’s female members revolting against their mistreatment. It isn’t some didactic discussion about male dominance and aggression, or a treatise on perceptions of Heaven and Hell as seen through a narrowly focused theological lens. This is a universal story of power: who has it, who does not, and the strength it takes to do the courageous thing no matter how painful it might be to do so.

Toews’ source material dealt with all these issues and more, and Polley’s adaptation confidently follows suit. Leave. Stay and fight. Do nothing. The choice isn’t as easy as it may initially appear. But then, doing the right thing seldom is.

Ben Whishaw, Rooney Mara, and Claire Foy in Women Talking – Photo courtesy of United Artists

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Lovingly intimate Daughter a hauntingly poignant delight

Tilda Swinton in The Eternal Daughter – Photo courtesy of A24

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN Staff Writer THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER Theaters Filmmaker Julie Hart and her mother Rosalind arrive late at the eerily beautiful, isolated Moel Famau hotel. The place is strangely empty, and yet, according to the curt receptionist (Carly-Sophia Davies), the room they reserved will not be available

until the next day. The kitchen is closed.

They will have to make do with whatever they have brought with them for tonight, and all remaining issues will be rectified in the morning.

Things are not as they appear. Everything is exactly as expected. Nothing goes to plan. Everything is perfect. And this is just the beginning.

The Eternal Daughter might be 2022’s best film. An extraordinarily moving drama of celebration, regret, creation, loss,

and family, this latest feature by writerdirector Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir, The Souvenir: Part II) grabbed my heart in an icily intimate embrace and then refused to let go. For 96 minutes I was in awe, and the journey mother and daughter go on is one I will never forget.

Tilda Swinton portrays both Julie and Rosalind, and in a career overflowing with magnificent performances, this may be one of her best. She dives in confidently, creating two distinct characters with their own

Tilda Swinton in The Eternal Daughter – Photo courtesy of A24

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personalities, histories, and ghosts who all stalk them down the lonely hallways of Moel Famau. As much as mother and daughter have in common, the emotional baggage they carry remains their own, and Swinton brings all this into the piercing, unflinching light with perceptive gracefulness.

The gist is that Julie and Rosalind have come to this secluded Welsh locale so the former can work on her new screenplay, incorporating remembrances of the latter’s childhood. Before Moel Famau was a hotel, for a few years it was also Rosalind’s home when she was a little girl. Memories hide around every corner and lurk in all the shadows. Windows shoot back cascading images as if they were funhouse mirrors, and even something as simple as a walk around the estate’s gardens produces profound internal reactions that run the emotional gamut from joy to sorrow and back again with paralyzing speed.

Hogg and cinematographer Ed Rutherford (The Ones Below) structure and shoot things as if they were making a suspenseful horror picture: the camera glides down hallways, cascades of fog ominously drift through the frame, and shadows dance in splashes of light with ethereal guile. Editor Helle le Fevre (The Souvenir) allows scenes to play out with minimal intrusion, each cut an ingeniously subtle showcase of storytelling specificity that only augments the uncertain melancholic aura the director has so skillfully generated.

But there is nothing scary going on here.

While Moel Famau is haunted, the only spirits stalking Julie and Rosalind are the ones they carry with them. These two women are searching for answers, but the exact questions elude them. Time loses meaning, and this moment of togetherness is all that seems to matter. Day and night blur into one, hard truths are revealed, and poignantly triumphant revelations are made.

What Julie is seeking isn’t important; it’s what she finds that matters. While more can be said, the glory of The Eternal Daughter is that individuals will likely find something of themselves lurking in the spectral confines of Moel Famau. Julie’s story is shaped by what the viewers bring to the table; they are as involved in the outcome as she is. This allows Hogg to create a gothic delight of self-discovery where every experience will be unique, and that’s exactly as it should be.

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C E L E B R AT I N G 4 8 Y E A R S!

Episode 44: Death and Friends In our final episode of 2022, Ash & Lindsey discuss art, art theft, Brittney Griner's return to the US, and the weaponization of Queerbating. Special guests Angel Luna and Nash Flynn of podcast Death and Friends chat with Ash about their show, the comedy inherent in history's tragedies, and, yup! You guessed it. Death!

FIND US WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS! VISIT US ONLINE SGN.ORG

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Film

Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance falls frustratingly flat

Naomi Ackie in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Photo courtesy of TriStar Pictures

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN Staff Writer WHITNET HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY Theaters Kasi Lemmons is far too talented a director for Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody to be a complete waste of time. The creative force behind films like Eve’s Bayou, The Caveman’s Valentine, and Harriet, Lemmons is great at finding unique and imaginative ways to buck convention, and this chronicle of Whitney Houston’s rise to superstardom, her turbulent marriage to Bobby Brown, and her accidental death in 2012 is no exception.

But the roughly 30 years covered in this drama were maybe too tumultuous for Lemmons or Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten (The Two Popes) to easily shrink down to just under 150 minutes of narrative material. After a terrific opening showcasing Houston’s (Naomi Ackie) romantic friendship with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), the singer’s symbiotic relationship with legendary music producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), and her showstopping appearance on The Merv Griffin Show, hings sadly slip into antiquated musical biopic conformity from that point on.

Why is this a problem? There’s no time to build characters, no room for Houston’s story to authentically evolve. While the filmmakers stick close to the historical events, much of what transpires throughout the second and third acts still feels contrived. The film can’t breathe, scenes devolving into episodic tedium so quickly I almost got whiplash trying to make sense of what was happening.

It is a testament to the undying magnificence of Houston’s songs (she’s known as “The Voice” for good reason) and Ackie’s tremendous performance that the film remains so easy to watch. The combination of the two is stratospheric as far as greatness is concerned. Houston’s skills as an artist — if you’ll excuse the obvious pun — sing for themselves. As for Ackie’s ability to live inside the iconic singer’s skin, she transforms herself so completely, it is almost as if Houston had been reborn.

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I did like the early segments a whole heck of a lot. The ease with which Houston and Crawford slip into their relationship is lovely. Lemmons stands back and allows it to happen, the sparse naturalism of the meet-cute and subsequent friendship-slashromance showcasing an infectious spontaneity I was immediately drawn to.

The scene where Davis first watches Houston sing in front of an audience is also an absolute barnburner. The young woman is performing backup duty for her mother, Cissy (Tamara Tunie), and is starting to grow quite the following. When the veteran musical artist spies Davis entering the club, she immediately feigns a scratchy throat and forces her daughter to open the show, and the younger Houston responds by tearing down the house with her vocal dominance.

It’s after that Merv Griffin performance

that things begin their downward spiral. Not only for Houston, as the drug abuse starts and the relationship with Brown (Ashton Sanders) turns toxic, but also for this musical biography. It’s not that the performances are bad, but more that the film becomes a series of time-jumping vignettes that does all the characters a huge disservice.

While individual moments shine (Houston’s Super Bowl appearance is a major wow, and the reenactment of the fabled “Impossible Medley” at the 1994 Video Music Awards is spectacular), nothing fits together with any clarity. Lemmons and McCarten speed through so many years, it all becomes a jumble. Houston’s money problems with her business manager father John (Clarke Peters)?

Didn’t care. Fights with Bobby? They barely register. Journey to rehab? Comes and goes so fast that it’s like those scenes don’t even exist.

And yet, there is a handful of splendid creative choices sprinkled throughout the film. Key events from Houston’s life are presented as-is and without burdensome commentary. Weight is given to the singer’s relationship with Crawford. Cissy’s influence on her daughter’s career is never minimized. Houston’s otherworldly ability to make seemingly any song she touched uniquely her own is justifiably celebrated.

Lemmons handles all of this with consummate gravitas, and I appreciate that she at least tries to avoid as many of the genre’s more recognizable clichés as best she can.

So it’s a shame I Wanna Dance with Somebody falls so frustratingly flat. Whitney Houston was a singular talent, and she deserves an equally unique motion picture chronicling her life. But this isn’t it, and that’s downright heartbreaking.

Nafessa Williams and Naomi Ackie in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Photo courtesy of TriStar Pictures

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Books

Mad Honey a sweet but deadly family drama

by Terri Schlichenmeyer Special to the SGN MAD HONEY JODI PICOULT AND JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN © 2022, Ballantine Books $29.99 464 pages

Image courtesy of Ballantine Books

You’ve never been one to follow all the buzz.

Gossip is not very reliable anyhow, and you have better things to do than celebritywatch. This star does that, and that star’s embroiled in scandal, nobody has any privacy anymore. Nah, that ho-hum has never been your thing. As in the new novel Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan, the hive is rarely right.

If you move slowly enough and don’t make any sudden moves, honeybees are generally peaceful creatures. Olivia McAfee in Mad Honey knows this, and that’s why she often visits her hives without a protective suit: she’s relatively sure she won’t get stung.

That’s not the case when it comes to

her son, Asher. A senior in high school, her eighteen-year-old can be prickly sometimes, and sometimes, stings are a part of parenting a teenager. This, Liv knows, is one of those times: Asher’s in love, and it’s not going well.

Nineteen-year-old Lily Campanello arrived in town with her mother at the end of the summer, and she and Asher have had a stormy relationship since they started going out. Liv hates to see Asher so upset, but she knows that love is complicated. She loved Asher’s father, despite the fact that she spent too much time hiding the bruises she got from him.

Asher knows he has messed up.

When he found Lily’s father, a man she hadn’t seen in years, he’d meant to surprise her, but the surprise was on Asher: Lily was angry and she wouldn’t exactly say why.

She just walked away, almost ran, and she wouldn’t talk about it. She wouldn’t even answer Asher’s texts, and now he was getting angry. Should he worry about her, or just go to her house?

He chose the latter.

It was the middle of the night when the police came for him. They handcuffed Asher

before they gave him his shoes, and hauled him away without a coat on a freezing night.

Olivia McAfee knows that mad honey is the result of bad foraging. It should be sweet, but it’s deadly. By the time you realize that, there’s no going back.

You know how your mind tries to figure out the ending of a book long before you’re even a third of the way there? Curiously, that doesn’t happen with Mad Honey. The story is too enjoyable not to savor, and besides, you know what’s going to happen anyway, right?

Or not.

Nope, authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan sneak a two-fer surprise into this book: The first one explodes with the force of a beehive full of nitroglycerin.

The second will leave you feeling smug enough to think you know how this culminates. Or not, but still: more distractions, more mini-explosions unspool at the right frequency to keep you happily eager to see how wrong you were.

This is one of those novels that’s done before you’re ready for it, leaving you slackjawed when you close the back cover. Mad Honey is pretty sweet. Read it, and you’ll bee very happy.

Helena Greer “Queers up” Hallmark

by Lindsey Anderson SGN Staff Writer With every spin of the globe, people everywhere get a chance at a new year: a time to reflect on what we’ve done and who we’ve become, and a chance to try once again to take steps toward making our dreams come true. For some, dreams can feel impossible, pushed into the periphery until life spurs the dreamer with new urgency. For author Helena Greer, it took fifteen years before she was ready to focus on pursuing her dream of writing a book.

Following her dreams “I got a bachelor’s in creative writing, and then I didn’t write anything for fifteen years. I went to library school and I was building a career in capitalism and not writing,” she said. The nudge that finally pushed her toward following her dreams came from an unlikely place: the Hallmark channel.

“I didn’t intend to write romance novels, but I read a lot of romance novels, and I was watching Hallmark movies and got angry at the lack of Queer representation.

And so I started drafting a book. I ragetweeted about it and a friend was like, ‘You could just write a book?’ So I started rage tweeting about it, intending to just throw it up on Wattpad or make it available on Kindle Unlimited, somewhere where my friends could read it if they wanted, but not with the intention of publishing.”

Although Greer never intended to release her work to the public, her friends recognized her talent and encouraged her to take a chance. “I have a friend who’s a writing buddy; she has several books out, and we get together and write. She read it and was like, ‘You know, I think this is something you should query to agents.’”

She started the publication process and persevered through some difficult times.

“I queried and signed with my agent in 2019, and we went on submission in May of 2020, which was a weird time to go on submission for sure because the world was in a strange place. We sold the book to Hachette Forever. It was surprising to me because I hadn’t ever written a novel before and it’s unusual to publish with the Big Five [publishers] without having written anything else before. It was sort of a zeitgeist thing — not to say anything bad about Season of Love, but six Queer holiday romances are

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Helena Greer – Photo by Jess Matos

coming out this year from major publishers, so I think there was something in the zeitgeist where every publisher was looking for something like that. Hopefully, there was also some talent on my part, but there was also luck and timing that happened.”

Queering up Hallmark Greer’s inspiration for Season of Love came from a desire to see more LGBTQ+ representation in Hallmark-esqe Christmas movies. To keep her novel aligned with the classic romance genre, she took notes on exactly what goes into making a Hallmark Christmas movie feel so warm and magical.

“I looked at the story beats of an average Hallmark movie. In a Hallmark movie, the main character will have an icy blonde fiancé who’s wrong for them, they will go back to their hometown they haven’t been to in ten years and kind of reconnect with

their family and there will be a grouchy lumberjack-type person who doesn’t think they can help save the business or whatever,” Greer explained. “Those are all classic beats of a Hallmark movie. When I drafted Season of Love, I went by those classic beats. So, Miriam Bloom is an artist, she has this fiancé who is sort of not right for her but not a bad person, and she goes back to the place where she spent her childhood, that she hasn’t been [to] in ten years, to sit shiva because her great aunt has died.”

While Season of Love does follow the classic formula of a made-for-TV holiday film, Greer also made sure to “Queer it up” by altering many of the expected tropes.

“She ends up inheriting part of a Christmas tree farm and they have to save it from going bankrupt, but the manager of the tree farm is this grumpy fat butch to who she is instantly attracted, and they have to learn to

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work together and save the farm together, and they end up falling in love. I took all those classic beats and tried to Queer them, not just in that Miriam is Bi and that she’s engaged to a woman and falls in love with a woman, but I tried to Queer them more by making it a big found-family situation.”

Greer also altered the traditional holiday rom-com by diving deeper into the emotional depths of her characters and exploring the reasons behind their actions.

“Those [original] beats are already traumatic on their own. Like, why wouldn’t you talk to your family for ten years or go home for ten years? Why would you choose to be engaged to someone you aren’t really in love with? It felt to me that there was an underlying trauma that you don’t get into in Hallmark movies.”

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Image courtesy of Forever

GREER

continued from page 13 Expanding representation While Greer wanted to explore more of the trauma behind classic rom-com plotlines, she didn’t want to write a story about Queer struggles. “Season of Love is not a book where it’s traumatic to be Queer at all.

Nobody has any trauma whatsoever about being Queer in Season of Love; they just have other family trauma. The holidays are often a traumatic time for Queer people for a variety of reasons, so I wanted the story to not just feel like a straight book that I had stuck Queer characters into but a truly Queer reimagining of a set of plot beats we see all the time.”

From the beginning, the Queer representation Greer wanted to write resembled her journey, a journey that other members of her generation could relate to. “The Queer experience is big. There is no universal Queer experience, and mine as an older millennial, white, Bisexual is different from, you know, a person of color, or a younger person, or whatever. But I wanted it to feel true to my Queer experience so that older millennials, people who came of age when I did, might see themselves in it. I wanted to make sure that it was true to my Queerness in the hopes that that specificity would be something that other people could see themselves in.”

In keeping the story true to her experiences, Greer excluded any adult coming out moments. “I didn’t want to write a coming of age book, because they’re 35. And not that people don’t come out and come of age at 35, it’s amazing when people do come out at 35, but I came out at 15 and so by the time I was 35, coming out was hard in my rearview mirror, and I wanted to write about adulthood settled into Queerness. That was important to me. I feel like there are a lot of beautiful narratives about coming out, but that wasn’t something that I wanted to tell.

I didn’t want to necessarily tell another story about how sad it is to be Gay, only because for me it is very joyful, and I am very grateful to be Queer. It is one of the things that brings me the most joy in life.”

Including Bi characters was also very intentional on Greer’s part. “I wanted to have some specific Bi representation. Miriam talks in the book about what her Bisexuality looks like. The second book, which is coming out next year, has a Pan character, and it is important to me that multiple-attracted people get stories that show the complexity of them,” she said.

Not only did Greer want to show Bi representation, something that is sometimes excluded from the Queer romance genre, but she also wanted to include Jewish representation in her holiday novel. “My dad is Jewish, and I grew up in this big extended joyful Jewish family, and we get more sad Holocaust books about Jews than we get joyful [Jewish] families, so that was important to me,” she explained.

“As someone who has never religiously celebrated Christmas, it just feels like a fish-out-of-water time of year because the entire world is filled up with Christmas stuff,” she said. She decided to write about the Carrigans, a Jewish family who works on a Christmas tree farm, to show the nuances of what family time in December can look like. As she looked more into the culture around Christmas tree farming, she made an interesting discovery, “It turns out, and I didn’t know this when I started writing, but a lot of Christmas tree farms are owned by Jewish families, and so, you know, I just wanted to have a warm, big, vibrant Jewish family because that was something I grew up experiencing.”

Greer also wanted to write about a young person involved in her faith, something she doesn’t often see in romance novels or Queer media. “I have been involved in progressive faith communities my entire life, and a lot of my adult friends are also really involved in progressive faith communities. And I don’t see a lot of that in contemporary romance, outside of inspiration romance, which is not progressive communities of faith. I don’t necessarily see millennials involved in their church as part of their progressive life very often, but it is a big part of me and everybody I know, so I wanted to show that in faiths other than Christianity,” she said.

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Helena Greer – Photo by Jess Matos

Greer’s favorite tropes Even though Greer admittedly “Queered up” a lot of the traditional beats of a Hallmark holiday story, she is a sucker for good romance tropes and made sure to include some of her favorite classics. “I love forced proximity, which this book is. They have to work together; they are staying at this inn that’s 160 acres of wooded land in the middle of the Adirondack National Forest with, like, four other people they know, trying to save a business in the middle of winter. They are forced to interact with each other all the time. I think that allows for a lot of shenanigans to happen because they’re forced to be together.”

Another trope Greer enjoys is second chances. “I love second chances and marriage in trouble books. I think it’s a hard trick to pull off, and I’m always interested in how the author can get the audience to believe that characters should be together if they broke up before, because I think in real life I’m always like, ‘Oh, no, you tried that, don’t go back.’ So they’ve got to sell it to make me believe in a second chance.” This trope is one she’s been toying with for her next book, a sequel to Season of Love.

“We are continuing the Carrigans’ Christmas books. The second book is set up in the epilogue of the first book. Miriam and Noel inherit the inn with two other people: Miriam’s childhood friend who is the son of the chef and handyman who works at the inn, and Miriam’s cousin Hannah. Hannah and Levi, the childhood friend, have fallen in love while Miriam has been gone for ten years and [then they] had a horrific breakup. Levi left to go be a cook on a boat, and Hannah had been feeling sad at the inn about the breakup. Now they all own this business together, and Levi is going to come back, and they are going to have to figure out their issues and see if they can fall in love again,” she explained.

“It is a Queer m/f couple; Levi is Demi and Pan. I think it’s very similar in style [to Season of Love]. There’s some trauma they’re dealing with, mostly with each other, because they’ve known each other all their lives and they had a terrible breakup and now they’re trying to be together but there’s a lot of shenanigans. You want to root for them, but you also want to shake them for being blockheads. And that’s fun.”

While Greer enjoys the tropes of forced proximity and second chances, her favorite trope is one she lived. “My favorite trope in the world is fake dating because my husband and I fake-dated when we first met, and you know, it worked. You’ve got to give it its due,” she said with a laugh. “Those are probably my favorites, both to read and to write. This book is forced proximity; it gets called enemies to lovers although I think they’re more antagonists to lov-

ers. They don’t like each other much when they first meet. Workplace romance, which I’m always like, ‘Ew, why would you get involved with someone you work with?’ but I wrote one. They own a business together, accidentally. I love that. I know not everyone likes instant love, but they have sort of this instant lust for each other, and I think it’s interesting when you’re instantly attracted to someone to have to figure out how to like them or even if you like them, or how to get along with them when you’re attracted to someone immediately. My next book is a second chance, so I don’t know, maybe I’ll get to write a fake dating book someday.”

Greer is excited to continue writing romance novels for the LGBTQ+ community, especially ones that take place over the holidays. “I don’t see any of my adult novels being about heterosexual people because I’ve never been a heterosexual person and I just don’t know how I would write those books,” she said.

The holiday season is a season of love for Greer, who celebrated her wedding anniversary last week. “My wedding anniversary is two days before Christmas,” she said. Much of her fiction stems from real-life inspiration, and her love life is no exception. “I have been married for eleven years now, but for our first anniversary we went to a cabin in the snowy mountains and we had no internet, nothing but a jacuzzi and a fireplace and snow for three days, which was an incredible date. But I also think it would be really fun to do that [in a book], but for two people who don’t know each other who have maybe booked the place for the same time and are then stranded in the snow together. I’m like, actually, that would be a great book; there’s a jacuzzi and a fireplace, this is a great romance novel,” she said with a laugh.

Season of Love is out now, and a great read for anyone looking to Queer up some of the stale traditions of the holiday romance genre, embrace new love, and take new chances in the new year.

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Travel

Leavenworth: You don’t have to travel far for holiday magic

Photo courtesy of Visit Leavenworth

by Benny Loy SGN Contributing Writer Before my recent visit to the Christmastown event in Leavenworth, Washington, I had never explored that strange, fauxBavarian town, a place so Olde World that it required its local McDonald’s to conform to the “Bavarian-Alpine” aesthetic. The extent of my previous Leavenworth experience had been gawking at Lederhosen-clad oompahband musicians as I passed through on my way to Spokane.

My fiancée proposed a day trip to Leavenworth to see the Christmas lights with some friends. Luckily, Stevens Pass was open, and we had a Jeep that could safely traverse the ice and snow.

Having made it through the treacherous pass, we arrived in town with a new challenge: finding a parking spot on one of the town’s busiest tourist days. After circling the blocks in vain, not only did we finally see some people who were leaving, but also, in a gesture of Christmas kindness, they gave us their daylong parking pass.

The slick streets were packed with people sliding from one store, restaurant, or musical performance to the next. Every building and tree was covered in hundreds of Christmas lights that looked like static

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lightning bugs waiting patiently in a twisting line. Small children in puffy snowsuits were being tugged around on sleds.

I walked past a Santa Claus actor to go down some stairs into the Andreas Keller to see about getting on a waitlist. The hallway to the front desk was crowded and awkward as people tried to leave and enter; I pressed myself to the wall to make room for a stroller. People kept standing in the doorway, allowing the heat to escape and sending one server into a fit.

“Close the door!” she would yell from the dining area. “You either come in or get out!”

The wait was an hour long, but we’d taken too many peeks at the food served to change our minds. Whatever we were smelling and seeing was too good to pass up. We gave the host a phone number and squeezed our way back down the hall to return to the surface world.

My friends and I tried samples in a specialty cheese shop, including a sweet, mango cheesecake flavored cheese that would be perfect crumbled atop toasted bread. We visited a tea shop whose walls were lined with jar upon jar of loose leaf, filling the room with their spiced aromas; and a candy shop where we scored pop rocks to noisily rip into, laughing together as the treat crackled on our tongues.

We glanced at the time and hurried back to the restaurant and through the line of hungry customers. Seated at last, I looked around the room at people happily chowing down on their Schweinshaxe (a Munichstyle pork hock) and Spaetzle (a handmade pasta made with eggs).

Along one wall were booths made from giant wine barrels you sit inside. The other walls were adorned with Bavarian art, and the servers dressed in Old World style.

It was like stepping into the past.

We ordered giant fresh pretzels, and once they were presented to us, we dug into the steaming hot bread. I was so busy finishing off the last remnants of the pretzels that I had nearly forgotten the Jaegerschnitzel (pounded pork cutlet with mushroom sauce) I had ordered.

The Jaegerschnitzel, a slab of breaded and flattened pork, reminded me of chicken fried steak, one of my great-grandmother’s favorite recipes when I was little. How might this taste like home for those with Bavarian heritage who feasted on family recipes passed down to one after the other?

Leavenworth presents an excellent opportunity to learn more about a culture and for Bavarian descendants to celebrate it.

We ate our fill and went back outside to sing along with the crowd as performers

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played “Sweet Caroline.” Everyone looked like they had been dusted with powdered sugar as the snow fluttered down, and on the song’s chorus, we all sang “dun dun dun” in joyful unison. My fiancée and I huddled together under the lights. She gave my hand three squeezes, which for us means “I love you.”

Now that Christmas has passed, you may be kicking yourself for not taking the trip to experience Christmastown for yourself. Not to worry. Luckily for you, the lights will remain until the end of February, offering plenty of chances to see Leavenworth glow, sparkle, and sing. Not to mention, you may have a better chance of scoring a hotel room and a parking spot, and of being seated in the town’s restaurants with little wait time.

This winter, after two years of pandemic-caused cancellations, Leavenworth is restarting its events, including its “Love from Leavenworth” Valentine’s event in February. If there is someone special in your life, now is a good time to plan a getaway. Leavenworth is a beautiful town with plenty of opportunities for making fond memories.

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Op-Ed

How to know when you’ve met “the one”

by Isabel Mata SGN Contributing Writer Ask Izzy is a biweekly advice column about relationships, mental health, and sexuality. Written by Isabel Mata — a Seattle-based lifestyle writer, podcast host, and mental health advocate — Ask Izzy offers tangible expert advice so all readers can have stronger relationships, better sex, and healthier mindsets. Looking for some more guidance? Submit your question at info@ sgn.org with the subject line Ask Izzy Submission.

Dear Izzy, How do you know when you’ve found the one? I have been with my partner for over a year, and I am head over heels in love with them. I can’t imagine my life without them! We had a conversation recently about the future and despite how much love I have for this person, it still feels scary to think that they could be “the one” that I am with forever. Is this normal? Or am I just afraid of commitment?

— Helplessly in love Dear Helplessly, Not to be that person but the short answer is that you will just know when you’ve met the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with. When you meet your person, the one you are destined to be, you will feel a kind of poetic certainty flowing through your veins.

The longer-ish answer is one way to tell is to ask yourself these questions: How do you feel when you are around this person?

Do you feel genuinely happy and at ease?

Does life feel more vibrant, beautiful, and calm in their presence? Do you feel like the best version of yourself when they are around? Do you feel safe and respected?

Can you close your eyes and imagine a future with that person? And actually see it, almost like a memory?

The answer might be “kinda,” and that’s okay. Not only is it okay, but it’s also a huge decision to make! The pressure alone gives me anxiety. Despite what Hollywood wants you to believe, true love is not instantaneous. It takes communication, respect, and an alignment of values. And most importantly, time. If the idea of forever scares you right now, you aren’t alone. It simply means that you are not ready to move to the next phase of your relationship. As I said, when the time comes, you will know.

But I want to offer an alternative perspective: there are multiple people out there whom you could have a beautiful and fulfilling life with. In an article for Psychology Today, Shauna H. Springer, PhD, writes that “the concept of finding a soul mate is riddled with logical errors, however, the biggest of which is the idea that our personalities are fixed and unchanging over the course of life.” And it’s true! People change. Even people who are in committed relationships.

Springer continues: “The soul mate idea implies that we are the way we are and that there is one other person who is a perfect match for us due to their collection of complementary attributes and personal quali-

ties. The goal in finding one’s soul mate is to identify this person, and the assumption is that once this person has been correctly identified, it will be smooth sailing because the two halves have become reunited.”

Sounds like a fairytale. But alas, real life is not a fairytale.

The truth is, as people we are not static beings, we are in a continual process of growth and change. So, for a relationship to truly be successful and long-lasting, both parties need adaptability and an openness to grow. Without that, there is a greater chance that you will outgrow the person you previously thought was “the one.”

And then what? Do you give up on love

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Photo by Kampus Production / Pexels

and happiness? No, of course not! Nora Ephron didn’t birth You’ve Got Mail for you to pigeon-hole yourself with a scarcity mindset.

Now that doesn’t mean you should be reckless with your love. Be intentional. It’s a magical relief to find the one who pulls you out of the dating pool. Continue being vulnerable; it is so brave.

Free date night activity: 1. On your own, write down a list of your top personal values. Have your partner do the same. Some examples are loyalty, equality, empathy, etc. As a prompt, think about the qualities that are important to you in a partner.

2. Come together and compare your lists. Talk about them! Why did you pick the things you picked? Why is that value important to you?

3. Create a combined family/relationship value list, taking values from both of your lists, or maybe even adding ones you forgot.

4. Grab some art supplies and make a visual representation of this list, something you will want to look at every day. It’s a meaningful way to be intentional in your relationship and a fun way to spend your evening.

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National News

Youth-designed, youth-approved selfsea helps teens through tough times

by Daniel Lindsley SGN Staff Writer Winter is only halfway over, and though ample holiday cheer surely graced a fortunate few, for many more, this is a stressful and isolating time of year. Youth nonprofit Peer Health Exchange knows that, and to help marginalized youth through to spring and beyond, it’s prepared a series specifically about caring for one’s mental health during the holidays.

The series is available on the nonprofit’s online resource library, and on selfsea, its free “peer-to-peer” mental health app. The app was designed by and for people 13 to 19 years old, and has such features as community message boards, storytellers, and education hubs for sexual and mental health. It even offers coaching on how to come out to your parents.

While the mix of offerings might seem like a mish-mash, Chris Wilson, assistant vice president of digital content, assures potential users that each feature was actually very deliberately chosen.

“Some of the biggest advantages of peer-to-peer, with selfsea, is that it’s cocreated with young people, and by young people,” Wilson said.

Peer Health Exchange has teams of high schoolers like the Youth Design Group and Youth Brand Ambassadors who review everything that goes into the app, all the way down to the resources it provides.

“So essentially — you noticed the sleek interface and the name — young people actually chose that, so they’ve been a part of this process from concept to scale,” Wilson said. That’s to “[ensure] that we’re responsive to their needs.”

That’s all great, but one might wonder how selfsea differs from other mental health apps like Calm, Pacifica, or TeenCounseling.

“What really sets us apart is it really aims to meet young people at the intersection of their identity and their health,” Wilson said. “So as young Queer people come into selfsea, whether it be [for] the communities, chatting with a health educator, or if they’re just checking out resource, looking at videos — they don’t have to come into this space thinking, ‘I have to put my Queerness to the side and only focus on the

National news highlights

by Daniel Lindsley SGN Staff Writer Tennessee proposes ban on public drag shows Tennessee lawmakers have proposed a bill that would classify drag as “adult cabaret” and ban it from public performance where children might see it — a measure that would effectively outlaw drag brunches, drag story hours, even drag performances at Pride events, with a penalty of up to six years.

The bill, SB 0003, was filed by Senate Majority leader Jack Johnson, who said he “filed this legislation to protect children” in response to outrage over footage of a child at an all-ages Chattanooga Pride drag event.

Religious demonstrators have delayed and hindered drag performances in other states, like early December’s Sandhills Pride in North Carolina, which implemented an 18-and-up policy after backlash on social media. The event was still dogged by a prayer circle armed with a megaphone.

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Images courtesy of Peer Health Exchange

current identity I operate in.’” selfsea does this through its “just for me” process, which is meant to avoid that kind of fragmentation of identity, and build a set of resources that address each person’s health in its unique entirety.

“We try to give them what they need, when they need it, for all the pieces of who they are,” Wilson said.

The app’s message boards in particular might raise some concerns for parents, who’ve likely heard horror stories of what can happen in a chat room. But as the provider of a mental health app, Wilson said, Peer Health Exchange always makes safety a top priority.

The only personal information selfsea collects and stores is an email address, which is stored separately from other data.

Trained moderators and mentors are present in selfsea’s communities 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to watch each post and keep discussions safe and constructive.

Additional barriers are in place to keep other personal information from being posted, so every user is anonymous.

Of course, when discussing mental health and related topics, people can be vulnerable. Sometimes a user might say something that offends another without realizing it, but selfsea’s moderation approach is “restorative” rather than punitive, meant to educate instead of punish. Young people chose that policy, too.

“I thought that young people really wanted this free-for-all space,” Wilson said of the community message boards. Instead, “What we heard from the vast majority

of young people is, ‘I can get bullied anywhere else. I want to come here to get information that actually matters to me; I want to see myself reflected in that.’”

As a result of these efforts, some of the most isolated Queer teens could benefit from the same kind of emotional support and validation of a found family, even if their circumstances might not otherwise allow it.

Even if you “age out” of the app, you can still pitch in. For those 18 to 24 years old, selfsea runs a digital storyteller program, where young adults of varying identities — many of them alumni of the app themselves — can share their experiences and pass down generational wisdom, to let teens like them know that they aren’t the first, and they’re not alone.

Selfsea has been running for two years now. According to Wilson, 69% of its users identify as LGBT+, 58% as BIPOC, and 40% as Latinx, which is a point of pride for an organization focused on serving marginalized communities.

“We’ve seen huge feedback in selfsea increasing their sense of belonging, their sense of community, but also providing them with health knowledge,” he said, pointing out that health knowledge is increasingly hard to come by in certain parts of the country.

As for selfsea’s future, one of its newest projects will integrate the resources it collects online with the more convenient and personalized design of the app, lowering the need for swapping between the app and browser pages.

In the meantime, the app already has a lot to offer. For instance, a partnership with the mindfulness service Headspace enables selfsea users to get a free subscription to Headspace. Other partnerships make it easy to contact state mental health resources, crisis lines, and the like.

When asked if he had a message for readers, Wilson said, “Recommend it to young folks. Young people tend to feel like they have to go it alone, and they don’t.”

You can find out more about selfsea at https://selfsea.org/. The app is available for Android, iOS, and online for any device with a web browser.

Kye Sanders, a drag performer and founder of Sanctuary Action Network in Chattanooga, emphasized to ABC Channel 9 that drag performances aren’t inherently sexual.

“We’re trying to create safe spaces for art and communities, and for people to feel something other than the discrimination and the bullying that we face every day,” says Sayers.

Lesbian golf legend Kathy Whitworth dies at 83 With her record of 88 victories in a single tour untouched, golf legend Kathy Whitworth passed away on Christmas Eve this year. She was 83.

Her partner, Bettye Odle, didn’t disclose the cause but said only that she died suddenly while celebrating with loved ones.

“Kathy left this world the way she lived her life — loving, laughing, and creating memories,” said Odle in a statement.

Whitworth broke records in other areas, too. In 1981, she was the first woman to surpass $1 million in LPGA career earnings, although she said she “would have swapped being the first to make a million for winning the Open, but it was a consolation which took some of the sting out of not winning.”

While she was rarely named as the most elegant golfer, she was often referred to as the best at winning.

“I don’t think about the legacy of 88 tournaments,” she once said. “I did it because

Kathy Whitworth in 1967 – Photo courtesy of AP

I wanted to win, not set a record or a goal that no one else could surpass. I’m not some great oddity. I was just fortunate to be so successful. What I did in being a better player does not make me a better person.”

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When asked what she would like to be remembered for, she once answered, “I feel that if people remember me at all, it will be good enough.”

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National/International News

FLORIDA

continued from cover The production company advertises the show as an “all ages” event, as does the website advertising the Orlando show. But the site listing all the tour stops warns that potential patrons might be barred depending on local regulations.

Miami’s show, for example, is advertised with the caveat “Adult content. Recommended for audiences 18+. Minors must be accompanied by an adult.” The Clearwater ads say that only those older than 18 will be admitted.

According to the traveling production’s website, Dragfans.com, the show has been touring for eight years. Posters displayed on the website’s “Past Tours” page show that the production has made stops in Florida for five previous Christmases.

Right-wing critics of the show tweeted videos showing a full house at the December 26 opening at Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center for the Performing Arts. The December 22 event in Knoxville, Tennessee, was sold out, according to Tennessee state Representative Gloria Johnson’s Twitter account.

According to a post on the website Florida Politics, the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation is investigating the production. DBPR head Bryan Griffin tweeted that the investigation is based on what he terms “multiple complaints about a sexually explicit performance marketed to children held in Fort Lauderdale on December 26.”

“The Department is actively investigating this matter, including video footage and photographs from the event,” Griffin added in the tweeted statement.

“Exposing children to sexually explicit activity is a crime in Florida, and such action violates the Department’s licensing standards for operating a business and holding a liquor license,” Griffin’s tweet warns.

A local family poses with the cast of A Drag Queen Christmas. The production company posted on Facebook "FLORIDA PARENTS ARE AMAZING! Thank you for supporting us as we stand by you!" – Photo courtesy of Murray & Peter Present

The tweet promises state officials will review evidence and turn it over to the Florida department of Law Enforcement if necessary.

Griffin also used his Twitter account to post a letter the DBPR sent to the show’s Miami venue host, warning the business to “avoid action being taken against your license.”

A state investigation into a July com-

plaint involving a drag show in Wynwood, Florida, is still pending. In that incident, the complaint was based on a video of a small child dancing with one of the drag queens.

At that time, Florida governor and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis threatened to revoke the venue’s liquor license, but the venue’s website shows the weekend drag

brunch as still scheduled every Saturday and Sunday.

In July, DeSantis said his criticism of the drag brunch’s entertainment is part of his fight to make Florida a place “where kids can be kids.” That includes efforts to pass the Parental Rights in Education law, which closely regulates classroom discussions.

International news highlights

by Daniel Lindsley SGN Staff Writer Spanish feminists divided over Trans bill On a similar note, Spain’s left-wing Podemos party has made another big step toward codifying a bill that would allow anyone 16 years and older to change the gender listed on their ID card, without the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The measure was approved 188 to 150, and it has moved to the Senate for final approval.

The bill has some of the country’s feminist lobby concerned, however, about how it could affect women’s rights.

“When gender is asserted over biological sex, it does not seem to me to be a step forward in a progressive direction; it seems to be a step backwards,” said Carmen Calvo, former deputy prime minister to current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “The state has to provide answers for Transgender people, but gender is neither voluntary nor optional.”

Other critics in the US and UK have trotted out similar rhetoric concerning women’s sports, women’s prisons, and minors self-determining their gender.

Equality Minister Irene Montero said that the law would “de-pathologize” Trans lives and safeguard Trans peoples’ rights.

“Trans women are women,” Montero said.

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Photo by Jane Barlow / PA via AP

Scotland lowers self-ID barriers, London skeptical On December 22, the Scottish parliament approved reforms that will make it easier for Trans people to change their legal gender. The reforms include removing the requirement for a gender dysphoria diagnosis and lowering the minimum age from 18 to 16.

Joining countries like Ireland, Denmark, and Argentina in implementing such self-ID measures this year, Scotland passed the bill 86 to 49, despite the opposition of Conservatives and some Transexclusionary women’s rights campaigners.

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Britain’s Conservative government in London said it had concerns and might try to block the bill.

“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK-wide legislation, in the coming weeks — up to and including a Section 35 order stopping the bill going for Royal Assent if necessary,” said Alister Jack, the British government’s secretary of state for Scotland.

Section 35 of the Scotland Act allows the Scottish secretary to block a bill’s submission if they have reasonable grounds to believe it would have

an adverse effect on the operation of the law as it applies to reserved matters — “reserved matters” being roughly equivalent to federal legislation.

“I think we can all hope that Trans people in Scotland will also be able to benefit from those positive outcomes as the bill removes barriers to the enjoyment of their human rights,” said Scotland’s social justice minister Shona Robison before the vote. Robison also pointed to a “remarkable” decrease in violence against Trans people in countries where similar laws were passed.

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